Japan's largest business daily Nikkei said that the Nexus 7 is taking over mainly because of price

Apple's iPad is notorious for being king of the tablets, but in Japan, this may no longer be the case.

Market research firm BCN conducted a survey in Japan last December to see what the tablet market share was looking like. Out of 2,400 consumer electronics stores in Japan, the iPad had 40.1 percent of the market while Google's Nexus 7 claimed 44.4 percent.

Japan's largest business daily Nikkei said that the Nexus 7 is taking over mainly because of price. The Nexus 7 costs $199 USD while the cheapest iPad -- the iPad mini -- is $329 USD. Both the Nexus 7 and iPad mini are 7-inch tablets.

However, the report did note that some stores in Japan have run out of the iPad mini, which may have affected the results a bit.

Google's Nexus 7 is a tablet made by ASUS. It runs the latest version of the Android operating system, 4.1 Jelly Bean, and packs various features like a 7-inch IPS display with a 1280x800 resolution, a quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor, a 1.2 MP front-facing camera, NFC, Bluetooth, 802.11n wireless, GPS and 16GB/32GB versions. The 16GB version starts at $199 while the 32GB runs $249.99.

Whatever gap there is in phone app quality is even wider in tablets. The difference in the quality of tablet optimized applications for iOS is substantial, not even close. I know several people who own Android phones (GS3, Nexus 4) but still keep an iPad or have switched back to one because the loss of applications was too much. If all they did were basic things like web/email/Netflix then it'd be a different story.

That said, while I like the form factor of the iPad mini I absolutely hate its display. Perhaps it'll be worth looking at when they double its resolution, but right now I don't much care for it or its price.

It actually seems like that's why the price is that high to begin with, so they can keep it the same when its display and SoC are upgraded to support 2048x1536

Android tablet and iPhone? Seems an odd pairing given that apps are even more vital with tablets, but I get it if they went with a Kindle HD or Nexus 7 based on price. $200 is a good price and the Nexus 7 is good hardware.

Yes, amazingly enough people think differently than you and place priorities on different things.

Personally, I wouldn't buy any of Apple's current lineup, because on all fronts, I can get more product and more features for less money. That may change, you never know what Apple might release, but looking at the current lineup, not a single product has equal features to an Android counterpart.

Best apps, best hardware. If all you do is email and watch some video then yeah, $200 is a good price for a cheap Android tablet, but by no means is it objectively better. Its like saying that a Nintendo Wii (Super Mario Galaxy notwithstanding) is superior to other consoles for being cheap.